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The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and Office for Civil Rights (OCR) recently came to a $275,000 data breach resolution agreement with Prime Healthcare of California, but HHS said it would remain until silent Prime completed the payment. With the more »
The cost of data breaches is on the decline, but a new source of breaches is on the rise, according to a recent survey by the Ponemon Institute. In the 2012 Cost of Data Breach Study, the organizational cost of more »
Republican leaders in the U.S. House Committee on Energy and Commerce are digging deeper into allegations that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) inappropriately apprehended millions of Californian patient medical records. In a letter sent Tuesday to IRS acting Commissioner Danny more »
Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital at the Stanford University School of Medicine is once again dealing with a data breach, this time it contacted 12,900 patients on June 11 to alert them that their data had potentially been compromised. This was more »
Prime Healthcare begrudgingly resolved one of the two federal investigations that it’s been a part of over the past two years. Shasta Regional Medical Center, a Prime Healthcare organization, was fined $95,000 last November by California state officials because it more »
On May 7, Independence Care System (New York) learned that it had a laptop containing 2,434 patients’ data stolen from an employee’s home. On May 31, the organization alerted patients of the breach with a notification letter that it provided more »
PHIPrivacy.net reminded us that many of the mistakes made in data breaches involve human error, as there have been three separate instances of CareFirst, a healthcare insurer, making patient mailing mistakes. In all three cases, CareFirst reported the incident to more »
A drug bust in Oakland, Calif., has revealed more than pound of methamphetamine and incidentally a cache of stolen protected health information for thousands of patients receiving care through Sutter Health East Bay Region, KTVU.com has reported. During a drug-related more »
A Montgomery, Maryland clinical social worker self-reported a patient privacy incident that occurred between late in 2012 and early 2013. Kara Falck recently sent a letter to the Baltimore Office of the Attorney General (OAG) that explained why seven clients’ more »
Reporting on data breaches is important to keep readers up to date with healthcare data breaches as means to keep all of the stakeholders involved – healthcare organizations, vendors and patients – informed. To what degree patients are affected remains more »
The University of Massachusetts Center for Language, Speech, and Hearing, which provides clinical services for those with communication disorders, reported a health data breach that affected about 1,600 patients that occurred on April 5. According to wggb.com, a malware program more »
The Veterans Health Administration, the largest integrated health care system in the U.S., has reportedly been hacked numerous times by foreign countries such as China and Russia since 2010. The House Veterans Affairs Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee held a hearing more »
Healthcare organizations have plenty of options when it comes to encryption and there’s a great deal of pressure from a compliance and legal perspective to encrypt patient data in all forms. So many of these organizations end up weighing the more »
After determining that there had been inappropriate access to its Mary Immaculate Hospital’s EHR system, Bon Secours Hampton Roads Health System informed 5,000 patients that their data had been compromised between April 2012 and April 2013. Two certified nursing assistants more »
A laptop containing the protected health information (PHI) from a now closed private practice has led an oral surgeon to report a health data breach to the State of New York, according to documents acquired by PHIprivacy.net. On Jan. 11, more »
There is more health data breach news coming from Florida, as a University of Florida medical practice potentially exposed 5,682 patients’ data as part of an identity theft ring. The University of Florida learned of the incident on April 11, more »
In one of the more interesting breach stories of late, the Health Information Trust Alliance (HITRUST) acknowledged that it experienced an external hack on Monday, May 27. Cyberwarnews.info initially reported that “TeamBerserk” (using the Twitter handle @TeamBerserk) had leaked some more »
Though Sonoma Valley Hospital learned of a health data breach on April 17, it’s just now publicizing that it informed 1,350 surgery patients of the breach. The breach happened on February 14 during a normal Sonoma Valley Hospital website software more »
Jackson Health System is reporting more issues with protecting patient data. Shortly after a 566-patient breach that was announced in December 2012, Jackson lost more than 1,400 patients’ data in January 2013 and have sent those patients notification letters. The more »
A co-conspirator who pleaded guilty in August 2012 to the 881-patient data breach that occurred more than two years ago at the Troy Regional Medical Center in Alabama was sentenced to 10 years in prison this week. The employee was Rhashema more »
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) released a resolution agreement yesterday for Idaho State University’s (ISU) HIPAA violations that date back to Aug. 9, 2011. Because ISU’s Pocatello Family Medicine Clinic exposed 17,500 patients’ data by disabling a firewall more »
There is more patient data exposure news from Buffalo, NY, as following the recent health data breach at DENT Neurologic Institute, the Erie County Comptroller’s office (headed by Stefan I. Mychajliw) reported that paper health records with protected health information more »
News 4 Tucson (KVOA.com) reports that at least eight patients in Tucson, Ariz. have had their medical data compromised after paper health records containing dates of birth, Social Security numbers and health insurance information were found in Tempe, Ariz. A more »
A healthcare chief information officer (CIO) saying that he expects to experience a health data breach is not only unusual, but may produce shock and awe in some parts of the healthcare industry. However, having this type of outlook, regardless more »
After learning of a former employee stealing patient identities, Community Health Med-check in Speedway, Ind. has notified about 180 patients that their data may have been compromised. WISH TV in Indiana reports that the employee (who no longer works at more »
